da | (no subject)

For me to become a citizen, I need to document that I've been in Canada for three of the past four years. Days since I became a permanant resident count 100%, and days before that count 50%. So, much like

melted_snowball did last autumn, I've been collecting dates of when I was out of the country. Fortunately for me, the majority of times I was outside Canada, I was with d., so I merely had gaps to fill in. The last 1 1/2 years were quite easy, as I LJed all of my trips. :)

Since d.'s having his citizenship test tomorrow (*) and I'd like to know where I'm at, I finished calcuating my "Absences from Canada" this morning.

The grand total says I can apply August 10th, assuming my upcoming travel is correct:

- one trip to see dan in CA,

- one trip to Long Island for my grandmother's memorial,

- one business conference in Chicago,

- and one wedding in CA (hi

ankawonka!)

This whole counting thing is sort of fraught with potential errors. Since it's a rolling window of time from the date I put on the form, finding the "right" date isn't as simple as counting once; since the beginning date depends on the ending date, which depends on the "absence" days between the two. ...I thought I had the optimal date, then I realized the beginning date was four years from today (not August), so I had to chop off some absence days from the count; which meant I had to re-calculate the ending date, which meant the beginning date changed again, which actually changed the absence count, which meant changing the ending date, and thankfully the beginning date didn't change the absence count again.

Of course, I could always set the ending date include a fudge-factor of extra time, but what's the fun in that?

(*) d. isn't interested in a party for after he finishes with his test. I asked. :)

Right now we're sort of lounging, maybe getting a movie, maybe playing a board-game. 'S nice to be in the same country again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sounds like an area ripe for a CC-licensed spreadsheet! (he said, remembering his dad doing the same numbers dance)

The immigration website offers a form to calculate the things, but it's clunky (many pastes, many clicks) and I gave up on it. A spreadsheet would possibly be a step in the right direction.

If somebody has only been outside the country a few occasions in 4 years, instead of 35 like me, they've got it covered!

Where are you from in the Us and where do you plan to live in canada?

I'm from upstate New York State.

I live in southern Ontario; for various reasons I prefer to not say specifically where.

The Canada Day citizenship ceremony at Woodside rocks, but for all I know the regular ones do as well. I kept much closer track of

catbear's immigration progress than we've done with days out of Canada for citizenship, but we haven't been stateside more than half a dozen times in the past two years and don't expect to log much out-of-country time in the coming year. April 2007, maybe May if we want to play it safe, will be when we start frantically looking for his landing papers.

It would be nice to take a long road trip and visit old friends. One of these days, but we've no intention of waiting until our life is in order because it never will be.

It would be nice to take a long road trip and visit old friends

I'm fortunate that my parents are a good half-day road-trip away, as are some of our close friends in Ithaca. On the other hand, there are LJ folks we would /love/ to see more frequently, further than a convenient road-trip.

Concerning this documentary evidence thing, for me, it's a bit weird-feeling to have this officially required record of chunks of our life together. First, since I/we applied for my Permanant Resident status as his common-law spouse, we had to produce documentary evidence of our relationship (which turned into quite a bit of evidence, because we wanted to make sure they didn't turn us down as a relationship-of-convenience).

Now, this document of every time I've gone out of the country since 2003. It feels a bit odd; both important and trivial, the most banal part of the trips and the most easily recorded part..

I came across my file with the sheaf of photos and "documentary evidence" recently, and it was a bit like a memory-book, though it was commissioned by the gov't and cost me /quite/ a bit to submit.